Twitter Debates Product, Brand-Focused Campaigns To Achieve Best ROI

Over the short-term, product-focused campaigns on Twitter deliver a greater return on investment than those focused on brands, new research suggests.

In terms of short-term sales,
product-only campaigns delivered ROI of nearly $2 -- compared to about 30 cents for brand-only marketing -- according to fresh findings from marketing agency Data2Decisions.

Yet, purely
product-focused marketing can backfire over the long term, as brand equity declines over time.

Of course, the best balance between product-focused and brand-focused advertising on
Twitter depends on the strategic objectives of each brand. Yet, D2D’s analysis showed that maintaining a balance of 70% product to 30% brand delivers short-term ROI without losing long-term
brand equity.

In partnership with Dentsu Aegis Network, D2D conducted a series of marketing mix modeling (MMM) studies covering two years of Twitter advertising for four of Dentsu’s
clients in three markets.

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The research also found that Promoted Video can be particularly effective at driving ROI for marketers. In the UK, for example, Pringles experienced a return that was
3-times higher than their average media ROI.

Across the four MMM studies, the
average ROI for Twitter Ads was 40% higher than the average media ROI for other channels, by D2D’s calculation.

Along with a healthy bump in monthly users, Twitter reported
better-than-expect third-quarter sales, last week. While quarterly revenue of $590 million was down 4% year-over-year, it was still better than what analysts had predicted.

Analysts seemed pleased with Twitter’s latest earnings performance.

“Underlying revenue trends provided confidence that the company is on track towards a resumption of top-line
growth,” Brian Wieser, a senior analyst at Pivotal Research, said in a research note.

Wieser was particularly impressed by the fact that Twitter’s largest 100 advertisers
increased spending on the platform by 23% globally, and 7% domestically.

“This reinforces our observation that many advertisers like and value Twitter as a marketing platform and
continue to use it,” Wieser noted.

Casting a cloud over the strong earnings report, Twitter was forced to restate&
nbsp;the audience estimates it reports to advertisers and investors, last week. In a letter to shareholders, the social giant said it overstated MAU counts for three years.

The restatement was
due to incorrectly recording “1 million to 2 million users per quarter” from certain “third-party applications” to Twitter’s MAU count, it said.